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Cortex XSIAM vs Microsoft Sentinel comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 2, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
5.7
Organizations using Cortex XSIAM saw significant ROI and improved incident management through automation, though results vary short-term.
Sentiment score
7.1
Microsoft Sentinel offers mixed ROI, improving efficiency and security, with high initial costs but potential positive long-term returns.
If a customer is already using Microsoft’s ecosystem, the ROI can be positive due to seamless integration.
We attribute our growth to Sentinel.
From a risk perspective, it's about mitigating risk, and as mentioned earlier, we haven't missed many things since we've had the offering in market—only a couple of minor incidents.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.1
Customer service differs for Cortex XSIAM: Premium support is favored; other tiers vary in efficiency and responsiveness.
Sentiment score
6.6
Microsoft Sentinel support is generally positive, with quick responses and valuable documentation, though high-tier issues exist.
With premium support, core Palo Alto technical experts handle issues directly.
It is ineffective in terms of responding to basic queries and addressing future requirements.
The Palo Alto support team is fully responsive and helpful.
Their solutions' integration simplifies resolving issues compared to those caused by third-party products.
Working with a Sentinel engineer helped us tune settings effectively.
When my team needs to escalate issues to Microsoft, especially for Microsoft Sentinel, the response is fast through their French entity.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.8
Cortex XSIAM is praised for scalability and flexibility, though some desire improved on-premises options and integration capabilities.
Sentiment score
7.9
Microsoft Sentinel efficiently scales in diverse environments with easy integration, automatic scaling, and satisfactory performance, despite cost concerns.
Without proper integration, scaling up with more servers is meaningless.
Cortex XSIAM is highly scalable.
Office 365 and Exchange are running on it, covering about 35,000 users efficiently.
As our organization uses Microsoft Azure and Defender, everything grows together, and we can integrate various features seamlessly.
Being a SaaS solution, the scalability of Microsoft Sentinel is robust.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
Cortex XSIAM is highly stable, despite occasional issues, praised for reliability, installation ease, and performance across environments.
Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Sentinel is stable and reliable, with minimal downtime, excellent uptime, and occasional minor manual interventions needed.
The product was easy to install and set up and worked right.
Overall, Cortex XSIAM is stable.
So far, we have not experienced any issues, and it has been stable from the beginning.
In the past two years, our team hasn't encountered any issues with the stability of Microsoft Sentinel from an operations perspective.
I need to be aware of deprecated connectors as they may disconnect, but the data continues to be sent with a need for quick adaptation.
 

Room For Improvement

Cortex XSIAM needs better integration, user interface, and performance, with improvements in vulnerability detection, support, and licensing options.
Microsoft Sentinel users desire better integrations, clearer features, improved speed, enhanced AI, and streamlined processes for effective use.
Obtaining validation for integrations from Palo Alto takes around eight months, which is quite long.
Cortex XSIAM needs improvements in terms of data onboarding, parsers, and third-party integration supports.
Cortex could improve the detection and online resolution of security vulnerabilities.
We have some tools, such as our off-site Meraki firewalls, that have not fully integrated with Sentinel.
Currently, we are happy to have a way in the middle with not so much cost, but it would be nice to have the ability to enhance the automation of workflows based on learned incidents.
There are complexities in calculating the right pricing tier for different customers, which makes it difficult for me as a consultant during upfront pricing.
 

Setup Cost

Cortex XSIAM's competitive pricing faces mixed reviews, with additional costs for add-ons and integration despite perceived value.
Microsoft Sentinel's cost perception varies, offering flexibility and integration benefits, yet data volume can significantly impact expenses.
The first impression is that XSIAM would be more expensive than others we tried.
The product is very expensive.
Cortex XSIAM is pretty expensive, and the licensing process is not very comfortable.
Microsoft Sentinel offers more capabilities than Bastion, with a more intuitive experience.
Setting up the right cost model for customers is intricate, requiring careful consideration of various components and licensing tiers.
The ingestion costs for the data analytics is usually the highest cost.
 

Valuable Features

Cortex XSIAM offers advanced SOAR capabilities, enhancing security with machine learning, automation, and efficient threat detection without extensive logs.
Microsoft Sentinel integrates seamlessly with Microsoft tools, using AI for threat detection, automation, and providing comprehensive threat management.
One of the valued aspects of the product is its use of artificial intelligence to detect security vulnerabilities.
The flexibility for creating manual workflows stands out.
Its signature-less subscriptions and robust detection power stand out in improving threat detection.
Microsoft Sentinel's ability to correlate data from multiple sources and its detection capabilities are essential.
Microsoft Sentinel has improved cost efficiency, which is one of the key areas we're able to win business against the ability to have threat intelligence.
Microsoft Sentinel's ability to correlate data from multiple sources enhances our threat detection capabilities beyond what is a simple data lake solution by filtering out the noise and consolidating the signal down to a meaningful level that is easier to investigate and see.
 

Categories and Ranking

Cortex XSIAM
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
15th
Ranking in AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (5th)
Microsoft Sentinel
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
3rd
Ranking in AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
98
Ranking in other categories
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of Cortex XSIAM is 2.9%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Sentinel is 6.6%, down from 8.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

AKASH MAJUMDER - PeerSpot reviewer
Incident response times have significantly reduced with efficient device integration and log parsing capabilities
Cortex XSIAM needs improvements in terms of data onboarding, parsers, and third-party integration supports. Additionally, a future update request is to enable tagging of endpoints in groups, similar to a feature available in Cortex XDR. The AI analytics need fine-tuning because some use cases are not working from my side.
Ivan Angelov - PeerSpot reviewer
Threat detection and response capabilities enhance investigation processes
My security team has been using Microsoft Sentinel for around two years. We also have Bastion and SolarWinds as part of our monitoring tools. We use a three-way tool, alongside Microsoft Sentinel, in our environment The most valuable features for us include threat collection, threat detection,…
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cortex XSIAM?
It is an effective solution in terms of performance and functionalities.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cortex XSIAM?
The licensing cost of Cortex XSIAM is more or less the same as Splunk, making it quite expensive compared to other tools. There are additional expenses for more functionalities.
What needs improvement with Cortex XSIAM?
Cortex XSIAM needs improvements in terms of data onboarding, parsers, and third-party integration supports. Additionally, a future update request is to enable tagging of endpoints in groups, simila...
Is there a common threat intelligence tool that aggregates multiple threat intelligence sources?
Yes, Azure Sentinel is a SIEM on the Cloud. Multiple data sources can be uploaded and analyzed with Azure Sentinel and its Threat Hunting functionality with AI available as templates or customized ...
What is a better choice, Splunk or Azure Sentinel?
It would really depend on (1) which logs you need to ingest and (2) what are your use cases Splunk is easy for ingestion of anything, but the charge per GB/Day Indexed and it gets expensive as log ...
Which is better - Azure Sentinel or AWS Security Hub?
We like that Azure Sentinel does not require as much maintenance as legacy SIEMs that are on-premises. Azure Sentinel is auto-scaling - you will not have to worry about performance impact, you will...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Azure Sentinel
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Microsoft Sentinel is trusted by companies of all sizes including ABM, ASOS, Uniper, First West Credit Union, Avanade, and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Cortex XSIAM vs. Microsoft Sentinel and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.